Unlocking Opportunity Through HCP+DTC Alignment in Omnichannel Oncology Marketing

Good morning, and thank you for joining. A lot of what prompted, OptimizerX to pick the topic of this panel is really around the emerging trend we're seeing with the need to align HCP and DTC alignment. At the beginning of the year, Optimizer X conducted an independent survey with physicians in which we found the overall consensus was that it was a need there was a critical need to align HCP and DTC alignment to streamline patient care. Today there is growing competition for patient and physician attention with the pressure of driving omnichannel marketing effectiveness never being greater. This trend is even more apparent in the fast moving time sensitive therapeutic category like oncology. As I sit here to today, I think it's safe to say that everyone's been touched by the disease of cancer. Whether you've been diagnosed yourself or have had a loved one that's been diagnosed and had to step in as a support and caregiver, it touches us all. In two thousand and twenty four, over three million new cases of cancer will be diagnosed within the United States. Of that, thirty percent will die from this disease. The question is, what would outcome look like if we were to align, HCP and DTC communication and reach patients and physicians with critical information sooner? That is why we're here today. It is critical that we get relevant brand information to physicians and patients at critical points within the patient journey. The ask is now and the need is now. We are hearing this from physicians and clients. I have a number of people joining the panel discussion with me this morning, including Sheila Carter from Merc Oncology, Mike Roussell from OptimizerX, and Molly Lee from Merc Oncology. Sheila, from our discussions, I know that you're an advocate of aligning DTC and HCP marketing. What motivated your team to rethink HCP and DTC alignment? I don't think it's like not rethinking it, but the partnership with DTC, that was an easy partnership if it's the right partnership. The impetus was the platform. So it was the appropriate platform at the right time. And so and it focused on the patient. So when we focus on the patient and put the patient at the center of everything we do, we know we're starting at a right place. And so when I think about sending time sensitive relevant time sensitive information to the patient, to empower the patient, and then in parallel sending relevant time sensitive information to that patient's provider, that's just a win win. And we're sending it at that critical time in the patient journey. So we're having a more empowered patient, a more informed HCP to make those decisions at that critical time in the patient journey. So it really is just a win win. Absolutely. Molly, anything to add? Yeah. I think that, these have been a little bit historically siloed. And I think that that's interesting because we know that the HCP is the most trusted source of information for a patient, and we know that if an appropriate, keyword appropriate, patient requests a certain treatment that the HCP is more likely to provide that treatment over another perhaps. And so I think that if we can empower informed HCP and patient conversations and streamline our strategy and our messaging, then that alignment is only going to increase more positive patient outcomes. So I think that the alignment, kind of to what Sheila said, is just a no brainer. That's so true. Can you speak to the process and how you got that alignment with both? So we're early in the process, but I can say that we've approached the process really collaboratively, and we've also been very deliberate with what we've considered. And so, we're really familiar, Sheila and I, on, what works well from an HCP marketing perspective. That's kind of our bread and butter. But finding opportunities that work well or have synergies within the direct to consumer space as well are less less common. And so as they are presenting themselves, bringing them early and often to our direct to consumer counterparts has proved really valuable. We've, we've been able to to find out that, like, this opportunity may not really seem strategically relevant for them, but we've also been able to find opportunities where they have a strength that we may not have, roadblocks that we can encounter together. So that's been valuable to bring them into the conversations early. And then I think that also approaching patient care deliberately. We are becoming present in a place where the conversation could be very, very sensitive. A patient could be finding out a life changing diagnosis, and how can we be there relevantly and appropriately without being invasive. And I think that that that's one of the the key factors that we're looking at with our strategy and messaging around point of care opportunities. And I think we spoke about this, Molly, in that we're respecting the HCP journey and their workflow. And by delivering those time sensitive messages at the right times, like that relevant message at the right time, we're respecting the HCP, and where they are, and we're building trust. Absolutely. So thinking back to DB last year, I think we all probably heard AI north of five hundred times. And I think it's safe to say artificial intelligence has come a long way. It's no longer a pie in the sky, but really technology that's tangible and looking to drive benefits, when used correctly. Sheila, how has data and technology played a role, in your efforts? It's amazing what a year. What a difference a year makes. It's been transformative, and AI helps us synchronize data faster. We have information that we have not had the privy of having before. And so working with organizations like your organization and other organizations, we're able to better target our customers, reaching them where they are. And I think when I really think about this partnership and other partnerships, we're being more deliberate, but we have more precise shots on goal. So we're not just sending messages, we're sending the right messages. And even with AI, it has the ability to modulate the message, like, as far as the touch points and being respectful again of that HCP and their workflow. But I also think about, you know, not only the partnerships and how we're doing things differently, but how we're partnering across the organization and AI is giving us the ability to do this. But it's not it's internal data, it's external data combined with internal intelligence because we're still driving the ship. There's still a human component here. So I wanna make it clear that AI is being leveraged appropriately, but we're also leveraging all the internal information and internal intelligence that we have. Absolutely. Mike, can you talk about why today's AI and other technologies are critical for synchronizing HCP and DTC communication? Yeah. I wanna touch on something that both, Sheila and Molly hit on, which they both said in what was critical to synchronize starting from the patient. So I like, all of the marketing efforts that we do are downstream from that patient journey. And critically, in our case, we're always doing this on behalf of the brand the moment that that patient becomes eligible for a brand. That's the thing. That's the lodestone that if we can find all of our downstream, decisions, we'll be better informed, and, hopefully, we're kinda making the right ones using that information. So then the question is how do we come up with that data point? For any given patient, when do they become brand eligible? I practice AI my entire career in health care, and so many times we're applying AI because it's cool kind of unnecessarily. There is a simpler solve to the problem. There's a less expensive, a higher ROI solve to the problem. And we're so lucky in this I find myself very lucky in this case that this problem of figuring out patient eligibility cannot be solved without AI. This is something that does not happen. The reason for that is all health care data that we might use to make these informed decisions, all of that data is either spotty, anomalous, or lagged. So any data that you might buy from a third party vendor, that's two weeks, four weeks, eight weeks old. And what we care about when we make health care decisions, especially marketing decisions, is what's happening today? What's happening next week? What's happening a month from now? That data doesn't exist, and so AI really needs to be a part to predict what is happening today, what's happening tomorrow, what's happening in a month. That's the information that marketing planners need to know when deciding all these things, especially to coordinate, you know, heavy heavily funded DTC and HCP efforts. If we're placing our bets, our big bets on these marketing decisions, it better be well informed on what's happening today starting from that moment of patient eligibility. Great. Thank you. Molly, I think it'd be easy for people to be intimidated intimidated by AI. How can companies embrace AI and not fear it? Yeah. You mentioned hearing AI mentioned a million times last year, and I think that it was second maybe only to bespoke. But, I was having a really hard time sitting in the audience trying to wrap my head around how I was gonna incorporate AI into my daily life, into my work life. And I think that this year, it's gone from being this sort of, like, esoteric thing to really where we are seeing the the AI rubber meet the AI road. And so, like, for me personally, that might be using AI to help me white space an email that I'm having a hard time getting started on, or it might be that we have access and abilities to process data that we that are unprecedented. And I think that regardless of how that data is being processed or how that email is getting into its first draft form, I'm still gonna have to make that message meaningful. I'm still going to have to craft that email into something that's more more meaningful. And I think that, you know, we're still Mike already said, like, the data is helping us make us more informed marketers. And so I think that the human element isn't going away, and I think that that's what really scared people, especially when we were talking about AI, like, esoterically. And I think that the marketers or the scientists or the leaders in the room that really can leverage AI and figure out how to incorporate it into their work lives, leverage it as a tool in their toolbox, and the organizations that educate and empower around that are gonna be the folks that really see success within the AI landscape. Mike, you you mentioned pretty much spending your whole career within AI. Can you speak to how we can look to leverage AI to really support patients? Yeah. Absolutely. So, I I think from OptimizeRx's perspective and from my perspective, all marketing efforts should be coordinated from the moment of patient eligibility. And I think, that when we when we meet with customers all the time, that resonates. Everyone that's kind of an obvious point. Of course, we should be starting from the patient. And what I think, if if I kind of, looking at all the businesses that I've worked with across my career, all the businesses that Optimizer X has worked with, there is always the want to. There isn't always the follow through, and it's because it's hard. And, so I'm I'm hearkening back to something that I I've learned in undergrad, in business school called Conway's Law, which says that, like, the products we build, the decisions we make as a business are basically a reflection of the organizational structures of the teams people are on at those companies. If you're on a certain silos siloed set of teams, the products will look like those silos. And AI is the ultimate cross functional application. It's more complicated. Because it's more complicated and and because it's new, there is no single there's no AI team that is launching an AI product without everybody else in that business having a say. And that's really important because AI is as both Amalia and Sheila were saying, humans need to have the veto power and humans are much smarter in a number of ways. So the the companies that I think have done it right are those that have a champion, have someone that is willing to break through that organizational red tape and stick with it. Doing all the small things that aren't fun, slip through the cracks on siloed organizations, those champions can make it happen. If you don't have a champion in your org, you know, shameless plug, that's what, vendors like us can kind of play play the role of. We are a steel thread across one use case. At OptimizerX, we do one use case. We predict patient eligibility and from that moment then synchronize your HCP and DTC efforts. But there are other single use cases that you might wanna solve with AI, and that's hard. And if you can't do it internally, you can attempt to be that champion, but then also seek vendors. Thank you. I can imagine there's probably, a few brand marketers sitting in in the room today. Sheila, can you speak to, you know, any internal or an external challenges you may have had to address, right, when you were looking to kind of leverage AI, but more appropriately look to kind of start to bring together marketing specifically around HCP and inpatient? I think the challenge is just not knowing, not knowing the information and really meeting your stakeholders where they are. So meeting them where they are and educating them and upscaling them early and often. So whether it be a lunch and learn or bringing in a vendor, to have those conversations and just know that it's an ongoing conversation, and you're continuing to share that value prop with the organization. I would say to the vendor partners out there, you're trying to solve a problem. So when you're coming to someone like myself or Molly, come with clear KPIs, come with a clear objective. What are we measuring? So when you think about these advanced capabilities with a premium price tag, it has to be a priority brand that can afford it, and you have to be able to go to your stakeholders to say, this is the value proposition. These are the clear KPIs, and this is what we're measuring. And so the expectation from myself and my stakeholders is that with a premium price tag that we're gonna have advanced analytics and measurement. So we have to look beyond the click. And, I think when you're bringing something like that to the table, you have to be prepared. Absolutely. Molly, anything to add? Yeah. I think, I've mentioned that we're a little earlier in the process. But to Sheila's point, education is really critical. And when you're doing anything moderately innovative or new within the pharma space, it is going to be a challenge. Right? And and that's okay. We're here for it. But I think that bringing your brand team along, bringing your direct to consumer partners in along so they can become a champion alongside this kind of process with you, But also a group that gets left off of some of these earlier conversations is your MLR team. And we've seen a lot of success with, you know, having conversations with our brand team, DTC teams, and MLR teams early in the process and explaining the business case, explaining the marketing objectives, and explaining, really, the the ultimate potential for increased positive patient outcomes. And if you can get them on board early and make them feel like they're part of the process, then all of a sudden, the brand team can help align with strategy. Your MLR team can help find ways to make it work compliantly, and you've got a group of people who are trying to help you get this to the finish line. And I think that the education and the conversations upfront can really facilitate that. It's a great point. Mike, in your role at OptimizerX, I know you work with a lot of different brands, a lot of different manufacturers. What has been your experience with working with brands trying to make this shift? Yeah. So as I mentioned earlier, I think the ones that succeed, everybody has the want to are the ones that have the follow through. And, the champions both Sheila and Molly mentioned, the champions are thinking not only about, you know, selling the value prop once, but then continuing that communication. I always say, like, an AI project is the penultimate over communication engine. If you're doing AI right, you are communicating infinitely. It's not only because it's complicated. It's because it provides this frontier of new decisions of of, like, a new decision frontier that you can, you can attempt to action, that have this, like, confidence associated with them. So the data does not say x or y. The data says with ninety nine percent probability, something is gonna happen. And then we need to choose, are we comfortable making that decision? Are we comfortable sending this message to this doctor because there's a ninety nine percent probability they're seeing a brand eligible patient or not? And so it's very important to to not only then have that champion over communicating across the org, but to have humans in the loop that are checks on the system for all of these different these different perspectives. And especially for the type of marketing that we're doing, it's almost it's almost always imperative to have a clinician in the room. Many manufacturers that we work with have clinical teams, always involve them, very important to do that. And and if you don't have them, then organizations like us have those clinicians as well. Let's talk a little bit about outcomes. Sheila, Molly, it sounds like you're both early in the stage of making the transition. Shiela, anything you can share in regards to kinda what you initially seen, and what you expected and hoped to see? I hope to have actionable insights, and I hope that this really just starts the partnership with HCP and DTC. With the right opportunity, I see that we could partner in the future, but I would like to have actionable outcomes. And, of course, I always talk about clear KPIs. I can't go without saying that, but that that's what I'm hoping for so we can continue to make more informed decisions, about, you know, when we're going to interact with our HCPs. Yeah. And I would say that, with any new program tactic, early in the process aligning with your brand team, in this particular use case, your direct to consumer team, yourself internally, and, and your your your vendor partner on what success looks like. Because success might look really different to Jen, which might look really different to me, which would definitely look different to stakeholders. And so unless you have those conversations ahead of time and really align on the investment, what success is gonna look like for the group as a whole, you can end up in a weird spot later on. So I would say setting the expectations early. Mike, from your perspective, what benefits are you seeing from brands that have made the shift? Yeah. This is where I'm I'm, like, brimming with excitement. As I mentioned earlier, so many times we apply AI because it's cool. Because it's not not necessarily always the right fit for the right job. And in this case, it's not even just about AI. It's like if I was marketing to to anybody in health care, the moral action that I would choose to take is find the right patient for the right drug. That's what I would choose to do morally. Isn't that cool? Aren't we lucky that that is also like the best business decision for us to make? That starting from the patient, that moment of eligibility, if we can find it with accuracy, is also the right thing to do from all of our other marketing efforts. It's not only the right thing to do because then every message we send has a higher theoretical ROI in the grand scheme. We're also being more efficient and judicious with our marketing choices, and those people on the other end of these messages, they sense that. They know this message has been well timed to me. We're all getting targeted advertisements all day, and you can tell which brands are savvy and which are not, which have me on a long list, and they've had me on that list since I clicked a button ten years ago, and which are really thinking that I'm the right person for this. And that, like, human kind of derivative of what happens via an AI program, that's really where we're seeing the benefit. And the proof is in the pudding here. The the DAP programs that we've run, DAP is our our technology name for stands for dynamic audience activation platform that that delivers this type of solution. All of these programs have script lifts, ROIs, double, sometimes triple what the static or the traditional messaging program would be. And like that, it's so cool to be delivering AI that is both moral and needed, and it delivers outsized results. Like, how lucky are we in that situation? Molly, what advice would you share for those marketers that see the potential of aligning HCP and DTC communications, but are struggling to get there and and get internal stakeholders on board? Yeah. I would say start iteratively. So if if DAP or HC or HCP and DTC alignment feels like woah and huge, then then start iteratively. Start where you're able to and really get your teams on board. Get your brand team on board. Get your DTC team on board if that's applicable. Get your MLR team on board if you can. But be prepared with any of these newer things to also come with alternate solutions, come up with a backup plan. Be prepared to be told no, and be okay with that. And understand that if this is something that you feel like is really a solution that can impact positive change within the industry, that you're gonna have to be the champion within the organization to make it happen. And that's that's not always easy, but it's probably gonna be worth it. And then I will also give a small piece of advice for the the vendor partners in the room. Mike just said a great thing. And when you're you're speaking to the Molly or the Sheelas of the world, AI is cool. I am stoked. I will nerd out on AI with you, but it doesn't always have to be the solution that you pitch. There are opportunities for very simple, very traditional marketing method methods to be just as impactful. So please, please don't feel like you have to lead with AI because it is the word that has been said most on stage today. I really wanna hear about the most impactful opportunities for the solution that I'm trying to solve. And I'll add to that. It's what problem are we trying to solve? Let's start there. And then again, the clear KPIs and and how are we measuring it. And, I'd like to know timelines. That's important as well. Like, how soon will we be able to get this to market and execute? Mike, any closing thoughts? Well, maybe we really covered the gamut. I have I have nothing left in the tank, but, it's it's been a pleasure talking with you. Yes. So yes. Well, this has been incredible, and very insightful conversation. I hope you guys in the audience enjoyed it. Obviously, I wanna thank the people who joined me on stage, and we're happy to take questions, outside, and certainly come visit us at our booth, if you do wanna catch up. Thank you.